Shelter in the Sky

For the last couple of days, I've been thinking about a plane I was never on. On Wednesday, during Chol HaMoed, I read that flydubai Flight 1073, bound from Dubai to Tel Aviv (I have flown flydubai on that route before), with 174 Israelis aboard, had nearly been brought down. According to reports, one pilot stabbed the other and tried to crash the aircraft. Brave passengers and crew subdued him. The wounded pilot opened the cockpit door so they could help, and the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia. As I suspect was the case for many others, I was juggling a few emotions. I will admit my first feeling wasn't joy. It was a shudder. A plane carrying a load of Jews was nearly hijacked, and the trauma of 9/11 and its consequences triggered deep worry. At the same time, it was nothing short of miraculous on so many levels that this plane and its passengers were spared from horrible tragedy. It didn’t escape me that this happened during Sukkos, the season the Torah calls a time for happiness. The Torah describes Sukkos as the time of harvest. The farmer has finally brought it all in, and he is told to rejoice. For years I read that as being about grain and grapes. This week I read it differently. The harvest is everything we're handed and rarely notice: a breath, a phone call from our children, a plain Tuesday that ends the way we expected. That is why we sit in a sukkah. The roof lets in the stars, and the walls shake in a strong wind. King David writes in Tehillim/Psalms 27 (we have recited that in the daily tefila since the beginning of Elul), I will be sheltered in God’s sukkah on an evil day.” During Sukkos we practice what the passengers on that plane learned in minutes: that our security was never in walls. ​ Our tradition insists that gratitude is an obligation. The Mishna teaches, drawing on Tehillim 107, that those who cross the sea, travel the desert, recover from illness, or are freed from captivity must give thanks. I wasn't on that plane, but I felt a little of what those passengers must have felt: shaken first, then grateful, then more awake to what I have. ​ So here is my wish for all of us as the Yom Tov draws to a close: may we say thank you more often than we think we need to, may we count the blessings we cannot see, and may we remember that true Guardian of Israel shelters us even after Sukkos ends. Have a Peaceful Shabbos and Yom Tov, Rabbi Yaakov Fisch